At long last, Holcim UK – formerly Aggregate Industries – is fitting solar panels to some of its factory roofs. Bravo.
Last week, Holcim UK issued a press release celebrating the installation of 464 solar panels on its concrete blocks plant near Cheddar – Somerset sunshine to help power Callow operations – obviously looking for a pat on the back.
☀️ Solar energy for Holcim UK site
— World Cement (@World_Cement) April 23, 2025
Read the full story at World Cement!https://t.co/nd1baHRBIH
But really, why has it taken this energy-hungry, CO2-intensive, polluting company so long to start fitting solar panels to offset its enormous CO2 emissions and enormous environmental footprint?
It can’t pretend it didn’t know there was a climate crisis. Twenty-five years ago, the company admitted:
During 2000, Aggregate Industries UK Ltd used over 740 million kWh of energy throughout its production processes. It is estimated that this energy consumption resulted in the release of approximately 224,000,000 Kgs of carbon dioxide.
Although by 2007, the company's CEO at the time seemed to row back, worried that climate change had hijacked the public agenda:
The public agenda seems almost to have been hijacked by climate change and the CO2 debate. Important as it is, for us the agenda has always been much bigger and includes biodiversity, controlling pollution, waste, water and local nuisance. Sustainability is larger still, bringing in people and products and I believe we need to achieve a better balance in the future.
Since then, the future arrived, and from the early 2010s the UK public has been fitting solar panels on their roofs in their droves. Now, more than 1.5 million households have solar panels. How many of those people issued a press release extolling their green virtues?
The future arrived a while ago too for other UK companies, many of whom have also installed solar panels. In 2011, Adnams Brewery installed 962 solar panel at its distribution centre in Reydon. In the same year, work began on installing 17,000 solar panels at Toyota’s vehicle plant in Derbyshire. In 2013, Sainsbury’s announced it had installed 100,000 solar panels across 210 of its supermarkets. In 2015, Marks & Spencer completed the installation of the UK's largest single roof mounted solar panel array with 24,272 panels at its distribution centre in Castle Donington – enough panels to cover 25 miles if laid end-to-end. Notable achievements, worthy of a press release or two.
When did Holcim start fitting solar panels? Not until July 2024 did Luke Olly, Head of Decarbonisation at Aggregate Industries UK, announce:
Completing our first major solar project on one of our biggest sites is a key milestone for Aggregate Industries.
What was the company doing during the decade that Adnams, Toyota, Sainsbury’s, M&S et al. were covering their rooftops with solar panels? Hoping that climate change would go away?
What dent will this key milestone make on the site’s energy consumption?
A total of 944 solar panels have been installed on factory rooftops at the site... [which] can generate more than 415,000 KWh of power per year, equating to 7% of the site’s annual power needs…
If sustainability truly is at the core of its strategy – as it so often claims – Holcim UK will have to do better than that.
